Bid to tighten up Cuba travel dropped from budget bill,

Cuba was one of the last issues holding up a $1?trillion spending bill in the U.S. Congress. A bid to make it easier for Cuba to buy U.S. imports also fell.By Juan O. Tamayojtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Congressional leaders dropped both a measure to restrict Cuban-American travel and remittances to the island and another to make it easier for Cuba to buy U.S. goods, putting some of the final touches Thursday on a compromise $1 trillion spending bill..

The agreement stripped a measure by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-South Florida, that would once again have limited "family reunification" trips to once every three years, capped remittances at $1,200 per year, and tightened the definition of "family," said Congressional aides.

In exchange, the Congressional leadership also agreed to drop a measure by Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., that would have eased a requirement that Cuba pay cash and in advance when buying U.S. goods permissible under the embargo, according to the aides.

The Cuba issue was one of the last hurdles blocking consideration of the government spending bill. If the bitterly partisan Congress does not approve it by midnight Friday, major parts of the government would have to shut down.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., agreed to the compromise on Cuba in exchange for a promise from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, to allow the spending bill to be voted on Friday.

House and Senate conferees had reached a compromise this week on a version of the bill, but Reid, responding to White House concerns, would not release it until the Cuba provisions and other issues, including some abortion regulations, were ironed out.

If the Rogers-Reid understanding falls through, the House Republican majority could push its own version of the spending bill, which would still retain the Cuba language, according to media reports Thursday.

It was not immediately clear if House Republicans had enough votes to approve the unilateral version, or how the four Cuban-Americans in the House would vote. The three Republicans and one Democrat include Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-South Florida, powerful chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

A House committee approved the Diaz-Balart proposal in June by a voice vote — with no objections — as a rider to a Treasury spending bill. That bill was later joined with eight other spending bills and rolled into the $1 trillion measure now before Congress.

Obama, who in 2009 lifted virtually all restrictions on travel and remittances by Cubans in the United States, threatened to veto the Florida Republican's rider a month later. But it was not until this week that Congressional infighting threw light on the issue.

Supporters of restricted Cuba travel contend that the trips and cash are simply pumping more money into the coffers of Cuba's communist government at a time when it has stepped up repression of political dissidents and human-rights activists and holds U.S. government contractor Alan Gross in prison.

But others argue that the visits help Cuban families reunite, and that the remittances help Cubans break free of their dependence on the government and even start private businesses, such as restaurants and carpentry shops.

Dissident Havana economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe and his wife, Miriam Leiva, wrote in an Internet column Thursday that they opposed the Diaz-Balart measure because the remittances "help Cubans on the island who face serious shortages and misery."

The spending bill would fund much of the government operations for the 2012 fiscal year. The current continuing spending resolution — the latest of seven approved this year — is due to expire at midnight Friday.

The White house has urged Congress that if it cannot adopt the full one-year spending bill to avert a government shutdown, it should pass another short-term resolution.

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